


Something Only We Know

by Good Morning Hawkins (quodpersortem)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodpersortem/pseuds/Good%20Morning%20Hawkins
Summary: After getting back from the upside down, Billy doesn't feel quite right.A Harringrove Holiday exchange fic for Pan-shego, with a mishmash of tropes plucked from the prompt letter and also things I've read in the past. I hope you like it, and happy holidays!WARNING: contains a brief nonexplicit reference to a past suicide attempt





	Something Only We Know

Billy prides himself in being strong. Physically and emotionally, he’s able to work through pain that he sees other people buckle under. He can keep going, kind of like a workhorse—but more handsome, he hopes. He’s never sick, he doesn’t get hangovers, hell—he’s in the prime of his fucking life.

All of this means he doesn’t notice the changes in his body right away. Initially he thinks it’s the flu—a sore throat, post-exercise lethargy, all things he can deal with it. It’s fine the moment he goes to school, he’s still doing great in basketball, and it’s not until he returns home that a nagging headaches set in.

Again, it’s nothing big. Nothing he can’t work around, nothing _too_ weird; anyone sharing a house with Neil Hargrove goes through periods of not feeling _entirely_ so fine.

No, Billy doesn’t start to worry until the moment he finds himself in the locker room during practice, with his nose buried in Steve Harrington’s shirt.

-

It’s not like he’s got black-outs—he _remembers_ everything. He just acts on impulses that can only be classified as _weird_.

He knows he should tell someone, but Billy’s seen the guys in white suits that assessed Will. Instead he shuts his mouth and ignores the turmoil in his stomach, dropping Steve’s shirt the moment everyone else floods into the dressing room.

He knows it’s linked to the upside down. He dreams about that not-place, about the big creatures that spit black smoke at him, filling his nose and eyes until he can’t think. He dreams about black trees and Barbara’s melting face, even though he’s only seen pictures of her alive. In his mind, she’s lying amidst the mushrooms in soft soil. More often than not, he wakes up sweating and panting, so thoroughly entangled in his blankets that he needs to put thought into unwrapping himself.

He knows Max can see it in his eyes, although they haven’t talked about it. Billy hasn’t talked about it with anybody, in fact, even though he’s had offers—Hopper, Nancy, Mrs. Byers. He can’t, his throat closing up even at the thought.

Instead he leaves the lunch hall when everyone else eats. It’s not the heavy grease of the food that leaves him unwell; it’s the noise, the people screaming and laughing until he’s overwhelmed, like his mind amplifies their presence and morphs it into something grotesquely unwanted. Instead he pops outside, finds a little nook around a corner where he’s not interrupted.

Sucking on his cigarette he stands in the freezing air, his arms cold and his shoulders and neck so tense he can feel pain track up to his brain again. It’s worse now, exposed to the chill and the outdoors, but staying inside is not an option either. Even taking a couple of deep breaths, rolling his shoulders back, doesn’t bring any lasting relief. It’s not something he can’t deal with, only uncomfortable.

Billy prefers to be comfortable, thank you very much.

He rests his head against the wall, closing his eyes against the pale overcast skies. The nightmares were particularly rough last night, like they’ve been getting worse since he got exposed to whatever-the-fuck it was. The Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer, names Max’ friends came up with that Billy feels undersell their inhuman nature. H.P. Lovecraft’s descriptions of terror have nothing on the creatures, the horror he’s seen.

He _doesn_ ’ _t_ have to open his eyes to know he’s not alone, to know Steve Hargrove is walking up to him, intruding upon little safe space.

“Fuck off,” he tells Steve, slowly blinking at him. His eyes feel too dry but standing in the quiet dark for a while alleviated his headache.

Steve doesn’t leave. He stares at Billy strangely, his head cocked to the side, watching him like he’s waiting for something else to happen. Billy doesn’t know what Steve wants of him, something uncomfortable squirming in his belly.

Under different circumstances he might have offered a cigarette, but he thinks Steve might want to discuss the upside down and Billy isn’t interested. He averts his gaze, brings the cigarette up to his mouth again, and pretends that Steve isn’t there because he doesn’t know what to do.

Steve shifts a little closer. Maybe it’s the shit they’ve been through together. Maybe it’s him saving Steve’s life back down there, he doesn’t know, but Billy doesn’t ask Steve to leave again.

-

It’s a habit that sneaks in. Billy will be outside smoking, and Steve joins him.

They don’t discuss shit. They don’t look at each other. Billy can sneak out between math and AP English and find himself standing beside Steve, leaning their backs against the now-familiar brick wall.

Initially, Billy thought that his headaches were a matter of being cooped up indoors. Thought it was a lack of fresh air, or the noise, or maybe there’s mold in the school building—he wouldn’t be surprised. But they’re never there when Steve’s standing beside him, or when they’re on the basketball court. He doesn’t know why—it’s not the nervous flutter in his stomach when he sees Steve walk up to him again, or the persisting inability to speak when they’re alone like this.

-

When the headaches get worse, Billy stops sleeping.

Tylenol doesn’t work and he feels like a wreck most mornings, though he tells no one—he fumbles his way through breakfast, his stomach gradually settling until he arrives at school and by then feels mostly fine.

That doesn’t keep him from going to Rudy’s party. Billy doesn’t really know him, but the kid’s Tommy’s sort-of friend, and he knows most of Hawkins High is going to be there, with flyers that got handed out indiscriminately.

The house is overflowing with a crowd of teens and it’s the first night in months Billy doesn’t feel queasy, free of his headache. Even the noise of the living room doesn’t bother him the way it seems to when he’s in school or out and about in town. He greets Tommy and goes for a beer, figuring he might as well party hard now that he does feel good, get rid of that anxious tension that’s been building in his stomach. Hit up a hot chick, maybe; he thinks about pushing her up against a wall to taste her bubblegum flavored tongue, something that seemed to work when he needed to distract himself before.

Instead, as he scans the room, his neck prickles. He knows it’s because Steve’s eyes are on him—like he knows _where_ Steve is in the room before seeing him. He hates that it feels like something shifts in his chest, like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit before fall together, settling his stomach’s turmoil.

He doesn’t move around to look at Steve—somehow, thinking of him is enough of an acknowledgement and even that is more than Billy would have _liked_ to give him. Instead he makes his way outside, his knuckles white around his bottle of beer and suddenly in desperate need of fresh air even though he’s not sure why he’s breathless.

There he smokes and he drinks, and he kisses a girl whose name he forgets—or maybe she never tells him. It’s not as good as he remembered, and all the time he wonders whether Steve is going to follow him outside, and he thinks of Steve’s big brown eyes and how pale his skin was when he got hurt by the gnashing teeth of monsters and how his coughs rattled with blood when Billy picked him up and hauled him out of there.

He pushes her away, gets up, but instead of driving home where he knows he’ll feel sick again he blends in with the crowd, shouting so much that no one’s got a chance to kiss him, so loud that his own voice overpowers his thoughts and he’s reduced to a room filled with noise. 

-

He dreams about it again.

He sees Nancy and Jonathan, panicking when they open the door to him. He feels the dread upon seeing the _thing_ trying to crawl out of the wall—the gaping mouth is more frightening on a bipedal being that moves in a way that betrays its intelligence and individualism. He has a bat in his hand, then, smacking it at the monster, his heart pounding in his chest. The image morphs and he has to swing the bat faster and faster until black goop is everywhere and the monsters keep coming from the shadowy tunnel and he sees himself in the dark, from behind.

He falls to his knees the moment he sees his own blue eyes light up in the dark, the terror in them. A bruise is blossoming around his eye, his arms got scraped in his rush to get away from the pack of things that he’d only just seen.

Billy thinks this is what Steve saw, what Steve _felt_ , and he doesn’t know what that means.

He tries to run. His knees buckle and give out, and things go black before he wakes up.

-

The first time the idea crosses his mind is in basketball practice.

Billy turns around. He doesn’t look, just throws the ball to where he knows Steve is headed. The ball bounces into Steve’s hands and he aims for the goal—score.

Steve’s presence circles around him the full hour and a half. He feels jittery, sweaty, he feels more tired than usual and then energy floods back into him when Steve sits on the bench for a while even though Billy keeps running, like the sugar rush after eating a candy bar.

It’s like they’re connected, a crackling signal that fades in and out with distance and grows stronger when they’re closer to each other.

It terrifies Billy, because this isn’t something that’s _supposed_ to happen.

Yet he knows when Steve’s out on a date with a girl from school, feels his own heartbeat speed up and his cheeks grow red as he twists and turns in the dark, the feelings intense enough to burst across the static between them, regardless of distance.

He can predict when Steve shows up tired. It’s not after Steve’s nightmares, and Billy knows why—knows that if those take away his energy then Billy’s dreams of his dad shouting so loud he falls into the gaping void of his mouth to see his mom bloody on the ground, of her morphing into dead Steve and dead Max and Billy forever unable to save the people around him, his hands digging into the cold wet mud, digging, digging—

They don’t discuss it, although as the days tick by Billy sees a growing awareness on Steve’s face, but only when Steve isn’t looking back at him.

Yet, he ends up with Steve’s sweaty shirt in his gym bag, and his own in Steve’s—he doesn’t have nightmares that night, with that all-too-familiar scent buried under his pillow so he can breathe deeply without anyone noticing.

The nightmares still come, but the terror fades faster and he starts to sleep again after.

-

“So,” Steve says, one day, three weeks later.

They’re in their usual hideaway, bags on the ground so they can dig out fresh shirts. They’ve taken to sleeping in a shirt before the exchange, so neither of them deals with more stale sweat than necessary.

Billy doesn’t want to discuss this shit. Talking about feelings still sneaks a noose around his throat, tighter and tighter until he can’t swallow. “Don’t.”

Steve pushes closer to him, pressing their shoulders together. “I know,” he tells Billy, like he can feel the string too—and he might, the two of them attached in some morbid fucking way. Billy imagines an umbilical cord they share, given to them by the upside down, and then the pair of them melted together like postnatal Siamese twins.

He feels his breath speed up until Steve’s hand wraps around his wrist, pulling him from his thoughts.

“You’re okay, Billy,” he mutters, not looking at Billy like he knows that’s too hard. His panic turns inward, invisible, while Steve sighs and a cloud of white billows from his mouth. Billy watches it dissipate in the frost—and then it repeats, and repeats, until his own breath has calmed down without him putting effort in.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he informs Steve, again.

Steve scoffs, then snorts. “You don’t have to talk, asshole. Just listen.”

He wants to say _no_ , tell Steve that’s not something he _does_. But it is, and he knows this is an unavoidable conversation, and as much as he wants it to never happen, he also wants it to be over sooner rather than later.

“This isn’t normal, Billy.”

_No fucking shit_ , Billy thinks. Steve must see it in his eyes because he rolls his eyes before continuing.

“I’m—I don’t think anyone should know.”

That surprises him. He had thought Steve would want to tell someone, an adult—Joyce, or Hopper maybe. Not the guys in the white suits they still see in Hawkins sometimes, not the men that lie in the bushes of the lab’s perimeter, silent and unmoving. But someone, a doctor maybe, someone out of state.

“Then why are we talking?” he asks.

Steve’s smile is lopsided as he shrugs. He looks away from Billy, gnawing on his bottom lip until it’s wet and red and Billy has to force his eyes up higher. “I—I’m having your nightmares, I think. Your dad—”

So, it’s that. Billy groans.

“I’m sorry, Billy,” Steve sighs. His digs the toes of his sneakers into the ground, rubbing at it, his shoulders turning towards Billy like he wants to move closer but doesn’t dare to—and Billy doesn’t blame him. He ignores the apology—there’s nothing Steve can do about the situation, because there’s nothing Billy can’t do.

“I also can’t sleep,” Billy tells him.

“Because of my nightmares?”

Billy shrugs, which is as good of a _yes_ he can give Steve. “And the headaches are getting—worse, I think.”

He sees regret in Steve’s brown eyes, the down-curve of his lips, and again fights that little voice inside of him that says _step closer, Billy, closer. Touch, touch, touch._

“We need a way to stop this.”

That’s the first thing Steve’s said Billy hadn’t actually considered, although now it’s out in the open that seems ridiculous. Steve is right.

-

Steve’s room is not as Billy expected.

“I don’t like to sleep in the heat,” he explains when he sees Billy shiver, moving to close the window. “I’m not usually up in here by day.”

“Right,” Billy says tentatively. The smell of Steve’s room is familiar, the same as his shirt, and possibly because of that Billy feels comfortable enough to sit down on the soft bed. Steve’s pillow is displaced, thrown to the side, and Billy figures it’s because his shirt was under there last night.

He doesn’t know what moves him to put the pillow back where it should be, but when he looks up, Steve is watching him.

“I don’t know how this is going to fix anything,” he confesses.

“The upside down is—dead, right?” Billy asks. “Like, the extra dimension or whatever it was is gone?”

Steve nods. “Jane says so.”

Billy takes a deep breath. “So, it’s like—something from there, that’s survived—inside of us. I think.”

“Like a creature?” Steve asks, and Billy shakes his head. He wishes it was that easy.

“Maybe more like a virus, or something—it feels like it’s something that got in our heads,” he says, tapping to his temple. They’re half-formed thoughts that have been on his mind for weeks, months, spilling out of him now Steve isn’t calling him crazy; now he’s in a place where he inexplicably feels _safe_.

“That makes sense,” Steve mutters. There’s a chair by his desk but he sits down beside Billy, the mattress dipping under his weight. “Do you think there’s anything we can do?”

Billy wants to say, _yeah_. Tell him they can go to Jane, who still creeps him out with her silent stares, and have her pull whatever-this-is from their bodies. But Jane’s powers are gone, and so are those of the other experiments, and the lab is nothing but a burnt-out hull deep in the woods.

In truth, he finds there isn’t a truth beyond _no_. He just doesn’t want to see Steve crestfallen, the thought alone sending a painfully sharp jab to his chest, so he shrugs.

Steve shrugs too, and they sit in silence.

-

“You’ve a headache too,” Billy groans, his tongue so dry it sticks to the roof of his mouth.

It’s a migraine, hammering against his skull. He woke up with clammy skin, feeling awful and _off_ with a desperate need for human touch, the hope that being near Steve would bring relief. Steve hadn’t been in school, making it pretty fucking likely that he felt the same way, after which he drove to Casa Harrington to find the house as sprawling and empty as ever.

Steve nods and steps aside to let Billy in.

It’s unspoken, but with the door closed they lean into each other. The pain finally gives Billy the reason needed to bury his head in the crook of Steve’s neck. He feels Steve’s arms wrap around him, holding on tightly, and the awful pain is lulled to a background murmur; a constant presence that he can kind-of, sort of deal with.

 “Fuck,” Steve mutters under his breath. Billy’s lost track of time now the immediacy of the pain is gone, and he’s started to feel comfortable. Still, he jumps back at Steve speaking, because everything feels inappropriate, now.

Steve looks at him, dark circles under his eyes, and reaches out for Billy’s arm.

“Come upstairs,” he mutters.

For a moment, Billy thinks Steve will show him a book or other source telling them more about the curse or-whatever-this-is. Instead it’s a comfort thing; Steve’s bed is unmade and it’s clear he was trying to sleep before Billy arrived.

He shuffles over to his nightstand and shoves the glass of water into Billy’s hands, muttering, “I can feel your thirst, asshole.”

Billy drinks it, even as worry starts to settle in his stomach—or maybe it’s nausea. The pain is returning now that he’s not touching Steve, and it’s been nearly seven months, and it’s never been this bad before. He thinks he can see fear in Steve’s eyes, but more than anything he can _feel_ how tired Steve is—knows, beyond a doubt, that Steve meant his remark regarding Billy’s dry mouth.

He’d be terrified if he hadn’t been hurting, if he hadn’t been so tired that his eyes are falling shut. Maybe it’s because Steve’s seen his nightmares and has felt his fears; maybe it’s because Steve isn’t judging him for any of it, much like Billy’s found it impossible to judge Steve for _his_ fears.

So, he curls up on the bed, back to back with Steve, and accepts the relief washing over him until he falls asleep.

It’s the first time in seven months that Billy sleeps peacefully.

-

He wakes up hot and disoriented. It’s dark outside, and Steve’s warm body is pressed to his back, his arm wrapped tight around Billy’s waist and his nose pressed to his neck. It takes a moment to remember how he got here, to remember how they fell asleep—and he thinks that maybe Steve thinks that he’s cuddling up to Nancy or some other chick.

The idea of Steve freaking out crosses his mind, and panic settles in Billy’s stomach. He can’t have Steve think this is his fault, he can’t have Steve piece together the dreams and Billy’s feelings, or the way Billy’s stomach flutters each time he looks at Steve—never mind what happens when they touch.

Instead he tries to pry Steve’s arm away from his stomach, to slip away from his hold, but Steve mumbles into the pillow and pulls Billy closer instead, unaware of Billy flipping his shit. When he tries again, this time managing and tumbling to the floor before he scrambles up.

Steve blinks at him, looking sleepy. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Billy shakes his head, gathering his shoes and slipping into them. He’s flushed, still too hot, and all he can think is to get out of Steve’s bedroom because he’s let the boy get too close and didn’t even realize it.

He grabs his bag, and before Steve can follow, Billy is out of the door and running down the stairs, escaping the situation.

-

He finds a different place to smoke. Steve tries to talk but Billy doesn’t respond, doesn’t look at him at all after a few days. He knows why Steve does it too—it’s taking an insane amount of self-control when Billy is starting to feel increasingly worse, nausea and headaches and nightmares that leave him perpetually exhausted, on the brink of snapping.

What terrifies him most is that, in the moment after waking up in Steve’s bed, he’d for a moment thought that could be _it_ , that whatever this was, it was something good that could be _forever_.

He knows he can’t expect that of Steve and he can’t have his heart broken that way—he can’t be let down. It’s not Neil he’s worried about anymore—he’ll be eighteen next month and free to leave—and it’s not that he thinks Steve would be a tattletale when they’ve both kept this thing quiet for such a long time.

Memories of California flit back into his mind, of kissing a boy on the beach at night before he decided he wanted nothing to do with Billy, wanted to ruin him instead. He remembers wading into the ocean days later, convinced that he’d drown until the current swept him back onto the beach like a big cosmic _fuck you_.

He feels like he’s back in that moment, with the water reaching up to his chest and making it difficult to breathe or move.

-

It’s only a matter of time before Steve comes to him.

Billy is at a party, shitfaced, vomiting into Marlon’s parents’ rose bushes. It’s a stinking fancy house and he hates everything about it. Most of all he hates that the drunker he gets, the more he wants to be near Steve, like he can feel the walls between them crack and crumble until it’s like he’s in two places at once—split into a double whole.

Maybe that’s what makes him retch, tears in his eyes as he hopes no one will hear.

He doesn’t hear Steve encroach, but he feels his presence. His stomach flips into somersaults and then Steve’s hand is between his shoulder blades, rubbing his back as he stays crouched over the bushes until his stomach’s settled a little and the world has stopped spinning at a dizzying pace.

“Billy,” Steve mutters. He doesn’t ask _are you okay_ because he doesn’t need to. Billy is still torn on whether that’s good or not.

“Go the fuck away,” he tells Steve, his voice embarrassingly thick with tears. He’s tired. Billy is so, so, _so_ tired.

Steve helps him further upright, walking Billy over to the back porch so they don’t have to spend more time in the stink of his puke.

Someone gets Billy a glass of water while Steve stays with him, watching over him as he drinks little sips. He’s still drunk, the world layered into double vision—and for a brief moment he thinks it might be he’s using Steve’s eyes, but Steve doesn’t seem to be suffering from the same issue. The vodka it is, then.

Billy doesn’t think he could have handled Steve talking—but Steve has wrapped his arm around his waist and Billy thinks he’s about to fall asleep, even with Steve’s breath ghosting across his foreheads as he buries his nose in Billy’s hair.

Billy still wants to run, terrified of all the implications of the relationship, but logically he knows that if he feels entirely at peace now, and he can feel what Steve feels, that means Steve must feel the same he does. So instead, he digs up that bravery he felt in the upside down and reaches for Steve’s hand. It’s not bloody now like it is in his nightmares, and not pale, and Steve is awake but doesn’t pull away from him.

Instead Steve turns his palm up to lace their fingers together, and he presses his forehead to the side of Billy’s face. His lips brush Billy’s ear as he whispers, “I’d kiss you, you know, if you hadn’t puked.”

And Billy laughs, because there’s nothing else he _can_ do. He knows they’re not out of the woods yet, nowhere near, and whatever-this-is will require hardcore navigation, but he knows he wants to kiss Steve at some point; maybe tonight after he brushes his teeth, or maybe later.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “you’re just picky. I always knew you were too pussy for vodka.”

Steve snorts. “C’mon. I’ll drive you home.”

He helps up Billy; this one time, Billy lets him without complaining.

 

\- End -


End file.
